What is your major and which class did you attend? Why did you choose that class?
I’m a Business Administration major, and I have never take any classes in the ECON department and I attended ECON C110: Game Theory with my friend. I chose the class because I enjoy playing poker, I was curious about the logic behind making decisions when you do not know exactly what the other person will do and have to think about incentives, probabilities, and how others may respond to your actions. Game theory felt like a more formal and analytical way to understand a type of thinking, but I can see Game theory application in many situations in entrepreneurship and business strategy.
What lesson(s) did you take away from this class that could be applied to your current area of focus?
I think the concept of best responses and Nash equilibrium is quite interesting. In class, we looked at how each player chooses a strategy based on what they expect the other player to do, and how an equilibrium occurs when neither side has an incentive to change their decision. We also discussed mixed strategies, sometimes the best approach is not to always choose one action, but to stay less predictable depending on the incentives of others.
I think this applies strongly to entrepreneurship. A startup usually make choices based on the attractiveness of a product, pricing strategy, market entry, investors respond and many other perspective. My biggest takeaway was to think about business decisions as interactive systems of incentives rather than isolated choices.
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